Intimistic orientation, so rare in contemporary artistic tendencies, is quite a constant in works of Danko Friščić. This intimistic line, in greater or lesser measure, exposes itself in all his works, independent of the media they are realized in. Other recognizable property of Danko is to erase borders between different media, i.e. painting, photography, video, installations, and all of them do mix together and confront as well. So, one might determine this art as “multimedial intimisme”.
Qualities mentioned before are present also in recent works exhibited now in Miroslav Kraljevic Gallery, built out of painted, graphic and video components. As happened before, this time also, the author finds the starting-point of his ideas in his earlier works: namely, in his case, it is impossible to follow the linear evolution of artistic thinking – this art evolves out of previous achievements and the evolution includes a back-look, too, rethinking of the thought. The artist recycles his existing paintings and studies how, through the filter of time and given technicality of other media, they change in sense of form and visuality, as well in a meaning, too. Necrophilia 3, the name given to this exhibition, poses the question of measure in which the artistic work exists in their nascent phase and, after that, inside the gallery in communication with spectators and, finally, stored somewhere far from the eyes of the creator and public.
In attempt to revitalize, in author’s words, his “dead” paintings, he submits them to the process of “revitalization”, consisting first of making the photography of painting and then digitalizing it or producing it on video and, finally, reshaping it in the form of a big-scale print. To this newly acquired “fake painting” Danko adds ironically the “salon” atmosphere, in form of colourful frame decorated with various applications, while the documentary shot of the one of the phases of remaking the original becomes the static video spot. Now, the painting exhibited on some former exhibition is communicating again thanks to the changed structure and new media.
The second composition of this exhibition might also be regarded as some sort of “visual illusion” erasing the borders of painting and graphic. The high-quality big scale computer print is glued on a raw canvas, simulating the texture and the outlook of a painted abstract composition. Classical building-blocks of painting, the colour and the preparation, exchanged their traditional role: the preparation, which is traditionally, supposed to be behind the painted layer, this time has a role of material painted over a surface at the print. At the same time colour, traditionally painting material is used to glue the print to the underlying canvas. The both compositions are accompanied with video composed of subsequent sequences of documentary shots of digitally prepared photographs of old works situated in domestic, working ambiance on the one side, and frames of some episodes taken from TV-series “TWILIGHT ZONE” on the other. Taking specific sequences or frames from different movies and TV-works is a recognisable property of Friščić’s video opus. The theme bounds them to the author’s thoughts on the position of art in the present time. One might conclude that through the works presented on the exhibition in Miroslav Kraljevic Gallery, Danko Friščić relativizes the aesthetic criteria and pronounces his utmost conceptual approach toward artistic problems, bringing out in the same time his intimate story about the social role and status of the artist a painter.
Željka Himbele
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
Danko Friščić
Born in Zagreb 30.05.1970. Graduated painting (class of Ðuro Seder) from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb. Member of HDLU from 1998.
